AW v Mexico Match Thread 5pm SS1 Thurs4th

Fallon looks lazy, just trots around up front

elliott just needs game time - he's essential to this team as he is capable of retaining possession.

Quoted out of context there!

A big loss would have done a lot of damage as there are plenty of folk willing to diss "soccer", so in that context a 2-0 loss against a good team in a hostile environment will definitely do. I went on to say that the performance was not good and a lot of work needs to be done.

You have a future in journalism. Or politics.Turfmoore2010-03-05 08:14:32

Teza2010-03-05 08:23:49

There is plenty of work to be done, but isn't that the point of these friendlies. I certainly didn't think Mexico was as good as some of the armchair critic types around the place think they were. 

Playing "Devil's Advocate" here...

Please explain how last night's game is going to help football in this country ?

How will a dour 2-0 loss bring kids to the game ?  How will it convince New Zealanders to embrace the game ?

How can I convince my football-mad 10 year old (who gave up watching at the 60 minute mark in frustration) to invest time in watching future All Whites games ?

Would losing 5-1 but showing some fire not have served the game better ?

Where is "The Beautiful Game" ? (Do we even have one ???)



[Personally, I think that I "get" it - as I'm sure most here do.  I'm just not sure that the road we are on goes where we think it does...]




ThreeFourThree2010-03-05 08:59:20

If your son really is football crazy and plays the game then he'll know that teams lose now and then (e.g. is he a nix supporter?)

Sorry...my mistake for lack of clarity - it wasn't the losing that frustrated him...

Yeah I'm hoping they play like that against France.

Yeah, unfortunaely it may be time for 'the talk'.  The one where you sit down and point out that sometimes you have to play to what you have and who you're playing rather than being Barcelona week in and week out.

The reality is we don't have the players to pull that style of play off against a nation as powerful as Mexico.  We could have tried to play flowing, passing football (and we did try at times) but I suspect the scoreline would have been much worse.

It's time to tell him where we, and the game in this country stand.  We don't have Carlos Vela on the bench.

Was Ricki watching the same game as the rest of us?

Wot, no chad?

I think you're misunderstanding: 3-4-3's son was frustrated because the AW's weren't passing the ball around and doing cool moves. Instead they were trying desperately to stop one of the top teams in the world scoring goals against them, which as we all know is BOOOORING and everything that puts people off football. The primary job of the AWs is to entertain ten year olds and other audiences with short attention spans, not aim for a respectable result, remember?

Oh, wait. Hold on. The other day Chris Rattue said that if there had been a 5-1 result or similar it would have meant the end of football in New Zealand. Now I'm all confused - two moaners are saying opposite things!!!Doloras2010-03-05 10:29:45

My only major complaint was how often our defence went into retreat mode. Siggy madly dashing with the ball towards our own goal is not something that inspires confidence. I am not blaming Siggy for this, the team needs to get into better positions as a whole. Definatly some speed work required in the gym.

QUOTE=S.O.N]My only major complaint was how often our defence went into retreat mode. Siggy madly dashing with the ball towards our own goal is not something that inspires confidence. I am not blaming Siggy for this, the team needs to get into better positions as a whole. Definatly some speed work required in the gym. [/QUOTE] Teza2010-03-05 11:34:39

I think that our endurance needs to be better to cope with the increased tempo when the other team step up a gear. It's true about the players standing still but can be resolved by better endurance so they would not be tired in their thinking and react appropriately and not stand still for their speed/agility. This would help both with the defensive positioning work as well as the attacking positioning. Endurance helps with thinking and concentration and to do well at the world cup tournament we need that. This match fully demonstrates that need.

You have to take a leaf out of Arthur Lydiard book. The fundamental premise of Lydiard's system is that to optimise one's performance even in middle distance events, such as the 800 metres and 1500 metres, one must train as if preparing for the marathon. Confirmed by exercise physiologists, was that marathon conditioning provided an athlete with the required endurance to sustain greater of levels of speed over middle and long distance races than opponents whose training had not included an endurance base. However in the soccer it is probably best to go with Frank Howell, the english track coach who system adapts from Lydiard in that he believes that all aspects of training must be present in a training programme at any time of the year and periodisation is a matter of simply emphasising one aspect of training such as speed or strength during a particular phase in which all the other training components are present. This would be more practical for footballers.

In a short amount of time we have (six months) endurance base can be worked on more to get more benefit across the whole squad. They would have wait later on in the other warm up games/training camps to gel better. They should get their extra endurance and some speed work from now until their match against Australia. We need to approach this like we are building up and completing in the Olympic event in six months to go.

Anyway, you have to understand that the Mexican way of playing the short ball and movement off the ball is their style and they are the best exponents of that type of play in the world. So it would look like we are stand still and incidentally surrounded by their players with less passing options and smaller passing lane.AllWhitebelievr2010-03-05 11:42:22

To me, the biggest problem the AW's have is the wide defense...especially down the right side. We we screwed big time there in the Con Cup. Mexico again had their best attacks down our right side.

tl;dr

I agree that speed is our greatest weakness at present. Unfortunatley speed is also very difficult (almost impossible) to train. It comes down to muscle tissue make up (7th form PE and sprint training). Fast twitch musles fibres are rare and not obtained from training. 80% of people have "slow" twitch muscle fibres hence most people can train to run for a long time and slowly. These slow twitch fires can be sped up but they cannot be made fast twitch. From what I've seen only McGlinchy and (maybe) Super Leo have fast twitch. The rest are making the most of slow twitch.

Minor detail.

Does this also relate to fibres in the brain? It would explain the NZ sports media.

With Herbert looking like he favours the 3 cbs and 2wbs we need fit and quick players in the wb role. Clearly Lochy has the left covered.

Personally I'd rather have Elliot on the field and Coombes on the bench just for the experience side of it, Coombes could be a very handy man to bring on late in the game when legs are tired.

hah

I've got a long spoon and a hornet's nest.

I reckon Paston would have had the confidence to come and punch the first goal.

Good to see a New Zealand game against rated opposition where the keeper is kept fairly much out of the action.

Also what to do with Nelsen Sigmund Smith and Vicelich?

agree on the speed:

fastest players Bertos, Wood, McG...not sure about Smith and Coombes.

it is boring, its bullsh*t actually. why did ricki go back to parking the bus when he said we were going to stick with 3 in the back? shouldve just left sigmund, lochead and smith in there, who cares if nelsen and vicelich were unavailable. theyd learn how to deal with it then anyways

as soon as i heard about the 3 in the midfield, i just lol'd and knew there was little chance of maintaining any kind of possession and direction, and that we wernt playing to win. we're no where near good enough to win a game with a 5-3-2.

if we're going to be seeing a back line of 5 with only 3 in the midfield by the time the world cup comes around, im not watching.

long story short - Mexico couldnt finish for sh*t, we shouldve capitalised on that. and we very nearly did (coombes mucked up that early ball and fallon drifted offside with his second half strike)

and who cares if "theyre one of the best teams in the world", they didnt play anything like one of the best in the world. Bahrain wouldve beaten them. im glad i went to training last night instead of watching the game live.


AJ132010-03-05 19:05:50

AJ13 if you don't watch the world cup because we play '5 at the back' then wtf kind of supporter are you, it's 3 at the back anyway stop being so negative. This game was not about the result, but about getting the boys together. That's why Coombes took the field on debut. Also, if second place in our group at the world cup comes down to goal difference I'd much rather lose to Italy 2-0 than try and attack them and lose 6-0. 

What do you mean it wasnt about the result? Of course it is. We want to be getting the best possible result from all of these games. You put players like Coombes, Hayne and Smith in there to see if they can help achieve a result and prove themselves. If they can, then great. Thats the point. If they cant, then the result has told us we need to change things. I dont accept that these build up games arent about the result. Id be disappointed if we dont win or draw any of these games.

The days of being happy with losing international games by a couple of goals are over. And I believe our current full strength squad are the team to finally change this, and positive results (as in goals our way) should be realistic for once. Go White
AJ132010-03-05 20:59:21

Since my last thread I have seen dome of the game, and I still stsnd by what I said before.I am happy that we only lost by two.
One of their goals was one of the best headers you will ever see. Can't see too many cock ups there.

Reading some of the comments, and material on this makes me believe that there are still people out there who thinks that if the national team is losing , then we are doomed.  What the f**k?!? We have never been a strong footballing nation and we all know that, but we do compete and put all our heart and soul into it, we have had some excellent results over the last few years, we are getting up there ... just support the team whether we WIN OR LOSE, that is what being a supporter is about, through the highs and lows.  Im experienced in that, since I support Perennial strugglers Liverpool :) ... football in New Zealand will die a horrible death (again) if people complain about the results.  

by the way, i like the automatic correction of 'pool

Can't seem to find any youtube highlights - are there any?

All things considered I think the game went pretty well. Mexico and most of their players were already over here training together and had just played a match last week destroying Bolivia 5-0, and it was 4-0 after like 20 mins. New Zealand flew in the day before the match and trained twice together, came in to a sold out Rose Bowl of 90,000+ Mexico supporters. Flying almost 13 hours non-stop from Auckland to LA and playing one of the top sides in the world without time to even shake the jetlag. Not to mention missing Nelsen and Vicelich. The people on here whining about the result need to take the circumstances into account, and also realize that the only way the team is going to get better is by playing these type of games against high level opposition. If all you want to see is the games NZ will win then just watch the Oceania rounds. As we were leaving the game quite a few Mexican fans came over to offer praise for our side and the heart that they showed, and to wish us good luck in the World Cup. It was by no means as easy a victory for Mexico as they thought it would be coming in. 0-0 at the half, and then in the 2nd half it seemed like some of the guys started running out of steam and gave up those 2 goals in quick succession. The result would have been 2-1 if Fallon's goal had counted, I recorded the game and uploaded a clip of it but its from Telemundo and they only show the replay from one angle so its hard to tell if he was offside or not, it looked like a legit goal from where I was sitting.

I uploaded the clip to You Tube

If you want any other clips from the game let me know and I can post them up, I also have some still pictures from the game too.
Bertos112010-03-06 13:46:04

There is absolutely nothing realistic about your posts.

More like delusional.

Really?

To me he looked like one of the slowest players who took the field. He was certainly the slowest wide player in the game.

Has anyone else noticed that Wee Mac has helped to set up 2 of the AWs last three goals?

Its true that two of them were ruled off side (dubiously maybe as in the case of Woods against Bahrain).  Him and Elliot should be our first choice midfielders.

I'd like to see NZF try and arrange an AW game outside of the International window against Indonisia, Malaysia or someone during the World Cup boot camp in NZ just to let some of the boys gel together on the park without the fear of Carlos Vela, Rooney etal closing down on them.